I've watched and reacted to this episode while feverish and heavily medicated. Fair warning.

Contains profanity and speculation and possibly a hallucination or two.

Spoiler and Spec Summary

Being sick is not good for spoilerphobia. Blearily flipping through channels on Thursday, I caught all of maybe a second of the Supernatural ad for the upcoming episode. Contents: Sam apparently bound and gagged, and Castiel saying Sam has no soul. All in the span of time it took to hit a button. Damn efficient, these spoilers! So, speculation at the end of last week seems to be on track. No surprise, really.

Also thanks to the channel listings, title: "Family Matters". *does double-take* *checks that season four episode about the kids in the wall* Ah, that one was called Family Remains. So, maybe we'll get some answers about Grandpa and the Campbell Cousins too? Might be unavoidable if we're getting answers about Sam.

Picspam Reaction, with speculation and randomness for Supernatural 6.07 - Family Matters

Well hell. I have officially been taken by surprise by a plot development. Also, normally the voice-overs for the episode throws are done by either Jensen or Jared, and tonight was Misha, which was cool.

-THEN. Avoided. I can guess the content, but don't want to take any chances.

-'I don't sleep.' DUDE. Um. That's not good. Handy, but not good. You really should have said something. And really, Dean, how did you not notice Sam not sleeping if you're still sharing hotels? Considering how worried you are about him, Sam's ability to fake sleep is either stratospherically awesome, or he's drugging your beer with Nyquil.

-[I blocked the guest credits on the first watch, but on the second watch I noticed that a certain actor's name was not in the opening credits. SHOW IS GETTING SNEAKY.]

-Sam doesn't know how he feels. Wow. Are we sure the Apocalypse is over? [Man alive, Sam has a thick neck.]

-Yep. Soul scan. Had to happen. And, hearkening all the way back to the Pilot, not the first time someone's shoved their hand in his chest without his consent. Not the second time either, what with that 'Get your hand out of me, Dean' thing in Death Takes a Holiday. Hm. They seem to have a thing for invading Sammy's massive expanse of chest, don't they?

-Sam has no soul. *sets aside all the theological implications for people who are more experienced and knowledgeable on such matters to discuss and goes with what Show says is happening, since Show is in no way the Real World* [Ooo. If Sam's soul is missing and this is making him not sleep, is dreamspace another plane of souls? What effect would dreamroot have on Sam right now? Since, you know, that's been on the wall forever. And while I'm speculating retroactively in advance of the reveal, what about that whole soulmates thing from "Dark Side of the Moon"? Does that mean Dean could be like a GPS to find Sam's soul? *ponders*] Aw. Poor soulless puppy face!

-"Sam's soul is in Lucifer's cage." Or at least you assume so, provided whoever reconstituted him didn't snag it as well. Okay then! Where did you leave the Horsemen's rings and how are you going to keep big L from popping back out along with it like a really pissed off Pop Tart?

-Um, yeah. I've been saying it for six years, boys. You need a bondage consultant, because your restraint methods are highly ineffectual. [Also, Dean, honey? That last shot there? That's a slip knot. That wouldn't hold a determined toddler. *pats*]

-Grandpa is a clue. Of course Grandpa is a clue. He's just a clue with an armed compound which makes leeeetle him a bit tricky to interrogate.

-Written by Dabb and Loflin, Directed by Guy Bee, who is ringing a vague bell from an odd direction. [HE DIRECTED ASYLUM!!! And that's the only other episode he seems to have director credit on, since he's been mostly doing Criminal Minds for the last five years. OMG yay!]

-"Recap it for our wingman." Heh. Cute way to introduce Castiel.

-"Scrawnier than I pictured"/"This is a vessel. My true form is approximately the size of your Chrysler building." *snerk* Yes, fine, put away the rulers, boys.

-Angel cavity search. Hee. And of course reconstituted Grandpa has his soul because he was roaming free in Heaven, and not stuck in Hell's high security lockdown.

-"Sometimes you scare me." Sam scares scary Grandpa. Eek.

-Castiel's getting messages. I really hope we find out more about what's going on with this civil war in Heaven soon.

-Ammo case. If I recall correctly, one can hold five cans of beer or whatever. A little too narrow for a full six-pack, but long enough that five can joggle in. Unless that's a different design ammo case.

-"You don't trust me."/"No I just don't know you." then "I trust you." Then "I don't trust you." TRUST ISSUES EVERYWHERE OMG. Not like trusting anyone involved on any side of this is a particularly brilliant idea at this point anyway, but the trust was flying thick and fast there for a few minutes.

-"You. Saying you don't trust family." In my experience, family is not limited to, defined by or automatically granted because of genetics. I'm not related by blood or marriage to most of the people I consider to be my family, and most of the people I am related to by blood or marriage are strangers to me. Family is shared experience and family is mutual support, good times or bad. Now, Sam here has had a year of working with Grandpa and the Cousins (without a soul which seems to make him a bit oblivious and sociopathic) so Sam has some basis for the trust and considering them to be family. To Dean, all these people are nearly complete strangers who have in the recent past behaved in dubious or shady ways. Blood be damned. In this case, for Dean, 'family' status has yet to be earned, and the way things are going I doubt it ever will be.

-Long story short, I'm totally on Dean's side there. Don't all faint at once. ;-D

-More hunters = more cousins? Or more vamp fodder? Or both? The two are obviously not mutually exclusive.

-Why have they not gone to Bobby about the soulless thing yet? They need to go see Bobby.

-"I'm in the rear with the reject?" *snerk*

-Hi extremely BC woods! *waves*

-Gwen reminds Grandpa of Mary? Not seeing it. It's not a 'she's a girl' thing though, a few of the vampire-chow in that little prep scene were female. If she reminds me of anyone it's the most recent Meg. Not necessarily a positive association that, as much as Meg does indeed rock.

-Yeah, avoid the spray. No running a risk of getting re-turned. It probably wouldn't work if it was dead vampire blood, but there's no sense taking a chance there. Hm. [Is vampirism a kind of psychic viral symbiote, since there's that connection to the head vamp with the visions and things? *ponders weird science*]

-Gunfire. Dead man's blood bullets? It looked like that was what they were making back at the compund. Wouldn't the bore temperature cook the blood? Or would it not get a chance to solidify before impact?

-Ooo. Right. Dean has insider info from the psychic thing. Weather vane. *nods sagely* Still no idea what it all means, but ooo.

-Grandpa really chews through the cousins on these missions, hunh? Gonna start getting tricky to find people willing to follow you into combat if you're known for heading off with a couple vanloads and only coming back with a handful. Just saying, human resource management. Look into it maybe.

-I don't know about you all, but if I'm in a house getting chased down by a vampires, I'm not going to bat ineffectually at the glass door and call for help. I'm going through the damn glass door, possibly without slowing down, unless it's double insulated or a sliding glass door in which case I'd have to shoot to shatter it first. Maybe. I have mass, momentum and really pointy elbows. *shrug* I dunno, maybe the episode budget over-runs for CGI blood shorted the budget for sugar-glass?

-[The advertisement during this break included giant anthropomorphic hamsters riding around in a toaster. I have a fever and I DO NOT NEED MORE SURREALISM RIGHT NOW THANK YOU KIA!!! O.O]

-Hey, she covered for Dean! Is she... not actually evil? O.o

-Yay for sudden roadside yelling! Yep, this would be the first time Dean has seen the 'live capture' policy, right? Though it seems Sam knew, and given what we now know about Sam and the effects of soullessness in this 'verse, it makes sense he'd be involved.

-Torturing Alphas. Sam's idea they not tell Dean. You know, that actually gives me a little hope for Sam. Because even though it looks really really bad, in Sam's current 'sociopathy and pragmatism run amok' state, the coldest most logical thing to do would have been to tell Dean immediately and try to get him in on the torturing, given his 30 subjective years of training in Hell. But instead, Sam asked that Dean not be told at all. The whole 'shoot first, ask questions later' is a convenient rationale that can be made to fit into the current Soulless!Sam operating system, but it isn't the most effective use of potential resources at hand, that being the former protege of Hell's chief torturer VS Alphas. I dunno. Call it clutching at straws, but I think that says something good about the whole Sam situation.

-"He's not dad." Nope. JDM's a bit off the guest cast menu unfortunately.

-"Whatever you need, I'll do." Did Sam leave or is he spying? Hoping for spying. Yep, he's spying. And looking all stealthy too. \o/

-Oh Dean. That had to be a really painful wait in the car, wondering if Sam would come back. He looks so relieved.

-"He thinks Velcro is big news." Well, considering Samuel Campbell died right around the time Velcro was introduced, to him it is big news. Everything is, because he didn't live through the intervening time, but now he's back and there's all this ubiquitous stuff out of sci-fi everywhere that had barely been thought of in the early 70's. I'd be stunned if he wasn't still showing signs of culture shock. His first month or so must have been hell. Grandpa Samuel is really fighting upstream on the technology divide. And socially. He died in 1973 and woke up in 2010. It's like an inverted 'Life on Mars'.

-Dead Man's Blood? How can you tell by looking...? *ponders other types of blood smeared on doors and Egyptian plagues* And doesn't it only hurt vampires if it gets under their skin? Otherwise they'd essentially be allergic to their own leftovers.

-Holy crap. Now introducing the stigmata electric chair, for when you need to show what an evil bastard you really are. Whose idea was that contraption? O.o

-"Ouch. Stop. That hurts." BWahahahahah! Oh perfect. Yeah. Annoying, perhaps. Torture, not so much. How is Grandpa effective at this torture thing?

-Of course he can hear your hearts, boys. Head vampire. Kind of goes with the job description.

-And of course he knows your name, Dean. You were turned. It's a family thing. Some themes on this show never ever change.

-"We all have our mothers." Mother. Hm. I seem to recall Lilith being considered the mother of all monsters in some lore. Which would make all the monsters ever really pissed off at Sam.

-These guys, Sam, Dean, and Samuel's crew all really suck at noticing breakout attempts, don't they? I suppose due to the angle it might look like a nervous fidget, but this is the head of all the vampires, and he's trapped in a torture cage being bored to death by idiot hunters who bind an epic level monster up with plain leather straps. The Alpha has no reason at all to fidget. However, his captors do. They really, really do.

-"We're going to war." Yep. Apocalypse might be over, but everything is destabilized all across the spectrum. *nods* Also, speaking of War, where did he get to? They just stole his ring, they didn't destroy him.

-"You smell cold. You have no soul. What an oddity. Do you feel how empty you are?" Eeeeeeeek. O.o Well, Alphas can apparently detect souls in some way that doesn't involve shoving a fist into a person's chest. Hmm...

-DANTE! DANTE! OMG THEY NAME-TAGGED FREAKING DANTE!!! *flails like a mad thing* \o/ Sorry, me and Dante go way back, further back than me and Milton, almost as far back as me and Shakespeare. Dante. Dude. Nifty.

-Purgatory. "Filled with the soul of every hungry thing that walked this earth." Which... isn't exactly Dante's definition, but whatever. *handwaves* Where the soul of every hungry thing goes. Hmm. So, Purgatory is like an afterlife All-You-Can-Eat place? Hey! I've got it! PURGATORY IS BIGGERSONS! OMG! It makes perfect sense!!!! \o/ Bweeeheheheh... I did mention the medication and the fever, right?

-[Taking the more coherent speculation relating to life, purgatory, and everything to a separate speculation post to be posted later as it kind of exploded my brain a little, I think, in deference to the Spec-Phobes out there. *waves at malevolent73*]

-"He does as he is told." Yep. He has a Sponsor. And now the Winchesters know. Lots of storyline progress tonight! *rubs hands together*

-"I have seen some disgusting crud stupid in my time, but you take the cake crown." Ghostbusters II semi-quote! Now tell him he has weak electrochemical bonds!! \o/

-Silly Dean! Go for the loaded gun your captor just dropped (or better yet, the great big knife that needs no ammo), not your favorite gun that's lying unloaded in front of you. You may have been practicing speed-loading since you were nine, but it still isn't instantaneous. *pats*

-Hi Gwen! Are you evil again?

-Damn that's a big knife.

-HA! Gotcha! See? Oblivious captors and people who push the torture button for kicks get splatted.

-"If we get through this, you me and Sam are having one hell of a family meeting." Dean Winchester is done being kept in the dark and being fed crap!

-Oh hey, did Cousin Thingy get killed there? I thought there was a twist-n-crunch?

-Sam's getting choked again some more! Friday is the new Thursday! \o/

-OH MY GOD WHAT JUST HAPPENED? [Prisoner transfer. All this happened so fast I wasn't sure what was going on for a second.]

-OMG HI CROWLEY!!!

-"He was possessed ages ago." That explains many things, including the extra added aura of raging asshole. And now I'm really glad he didn't get to keep that baby. O.O

-OMG CROWLEY'S THE SPONSOR!!! Oh wow, cool! I think I may have plot-whiplash from the sudden developments there (and the shortest elapsed time between the boys finding out something is off and the boys finding out why it's off, who's behind it and what their plans are), not that that's a bad thing and not that the evidence hasn't been there all along, but seriously WOW! Plot reveals this huge never happen in the seventh episode of a season!!!

-Yeah, Crowley's got Sam's soul, or thinks he can get it. Not sure if a self-appointed King of Hell actually can open Lucifer's cage any easier than the prior regime.

-"Was a punk-ass Crossroads Demon. Now, King of Hell." Yep. Hm. Heaven's got a Civil War, order dissolving into anarchy, Hell has a shiny new dictator, anarchy forming into order. There might be meta there somehow.

-"Me Charlie, you angels." *snerk*

-So much yay for a larger Crowley plotline! \o/ Hope Sam and Dean managed to snag one or two of his bones before they handed them over in Scotland. They would come in really handy now.

-Hey, Gwen's kind of going... morally grey. Or at least less evil. Cool! The boys need more allies, even if only to enrich the target environment for their enemies, so Bobby and Castiel aren't so directly in the line of fire.

-Oh crap, Grandpa's speech is getting Dean's family theme music. Did he just get adopted?

-"He sold us out."/"I know. Let it go." Apparently so. Well, there's a total 180 from the top of the hour. Holy crap this episode! O.O

-Working for Crowley while plotting and stuff. Did NOT see that coming, though really I should have. I do not disapprove of this development. In fact, awesome! \o/

(PLEASE, NO SPOILERS OR REFERENCES TO SPOILERY MATERIAL IN COMMENTS! Any and all promo material for unaired episodes is considered to be a spoiler in this journal. The further definition of what constitutes a spoiler for this journal is located in left hand sidebar. Theory and speculation based on aired episodes only.)

Guy Bee was a guest on WinchesterBros' podcast Friday night after the episode aired. He told a lot of great stuff about directing this episode (and Asylum) and one of the things he mentioned was that it was Mark Sheppard who insisted that he not get credited for this episode. He wanted it to be a surprise for everyone.

-"We all have our mothers." Mother. Hm. I seem to recall Lilith being considered the mother of all monsters in some lore. Which would make all the monsters ever really pissed off at Sam.This is very much what I am hoping because I like it when things tie together. And yeah, there's lots of lore on Lilith as having mated with demons and creating monsters. Wheee!

I, too, thought that fan looked awfully familiar.

And the commercials for Kia with the scary hamsters showed here, too and I'm not even on meds and it freaked me the !@#$ out. Many of the text messages flying back and forth between Flurije and I were about the scary evil hamsters.

If all this ties together, like all of it, I will be ecstatic. I haven't got a read on Sera as a showrunner yet in terms of what she's planning, but this episode gives me great hope for epic plot and things getting funky. :-)

And I know Kia tries to have unique and memorable commercials for their vehicles, but those hamsters were just wrong.

I do love it when we have so much plot thrown into an episode--fills me with glee:) In randomness the vampires remind me of a Thai folktale, their vampires are nothing but a head with organs hanging down that fly about--then take over their victims if I remember right. Apparently I am all about the random..lol I am also on Dean's side with the trust issues, which I am sure comes as a shock too;)And Dante--wooooo!!!

Heee didn't you just love that "Hey," of Dean's and the tiny smile Jensen did when it transpired Sam hadn't ditched him for the Campbells? He may be soulless but Sam's always going to be Dean's family.

Oh and the comment I deleted last week? Was warning you to steer clear of this week's promo because it totally gave away what's up with Sam.

Yay Crowley!!! And I'm actually starting to like Gwen too!

Hope they don't drag on Soulless Sam for too long. And hey, maybe Crowley could dig up poor Adam at some point too!

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